Now available on limited-edition 180 gram colored vinyl, in a metallic foil-stamped gatefold package...

A lot of the "super group"-style projects that have come out of the underground metal scene in recent years have left me cold, but Corrections House had their rusty iron hooks in me as soon as I'd heard the concept behind the band. Taking its themes and lyrics from the book Cancer as a Social Activity from Eyehategod front-man Mike Williams, and appropriating a militant visual aesthetic that harkens back to some of the more threatening-looking industrial outfits of the 1980s, Corrections House consists of Williams, Bruce Lamont (Yakuza), Sanford Parker (Minsk) and Scott Kelly (Neurosis) teaming up to bludgeon the listener with a powerful combo of dark sludge-metal heaviness and apocalyptic industrial sounds. And it's an effective dystopian nightmare that the band weaves here, melding squalls of nightmarish noir-jazz saxophone and pounding industrial rhythms with slabs of crushing, doom-laden metallic riffage and layers of carefully constructed caustic noise and electronics, a confluence of sounds that is right my alley. Not surprisingly, you can detect a near constant whiff of Neurosis's dire psychedelic sludgemetal through much of Last City Zero; just listen to the beginning of opener "Serve Or Survive", which prominently features Scott Kelley's familiar deep, weather-beaten croon over the song's dark, droning guitars, the portentous atmosphere lit by distant bonfires and rumbling thunder that echo Neurosis's more subdued, solemn passages of apocalyptic dread.

But when the entire band finally comes together, the sound transforms into something more unique, with Williams joining Kelley's gruff singing with his own pain-wracked scream, while a steady, pneumatic rhythm begins to pound away relentlessly beneath the grinding, dour riffage, the sound evolving into something that sounds equal parts darkened saurian doom metal, Swans-like percussive power, and electro-shocks of concussive Wax Trax-esque industrial music. That grim industrial-laced sludge is all over this album, from "Party Leg And Three Fingers", where the sound takes on a heavily layered, militant feel, martial drum machine rhythms pounding beneath the bleak, down-tuned heaviness, the dual vocals again offering a contrast between Kelly's world-weary bellow and the manic psychological collapse that seems to be occurring beneath Williams's tortured scream, a frenzy of free-jazz saxophones ascending overhead, bathed in delay and other spacey effects, smears of cetacean scream rising over the droning, hypnotic industro-crush. And on to the jackhammer drumming and frantic tempo of "Bullets And Graves", which channels some of that maniacal industrial thrash of early 90s Ministry, while "Dirt Poor And Mentally Ill" also hints at the sheet-metal pummel and churning aggression of Ministry's earlier works while combining it with even heavier dosages of bellicose down-tuned guitar, and Williams splitting his delivery between the harsh screaming and spoken word passages as he reads from excerpts of his texts. The electronic loops and noise textures play a major part of Last City Zero's sound, with the sludgy metallic heaviness often giving way to more subdued atmospheric noisescapes filled with massive rumbling synth, fluttering mechanical sounds, and looped turntable surface noise. And on "Run Through The Night", the sound of acoustic guitars and poignant melodies are consumed in a maelstrom of harsh static; the title track is the prime example, a haunting spoken word piece that has Williams reading one of his more Burroughsian prose pieces over gently, desolate acoustic strum and crackling electronic noise. And it closes with a final blast of jazz-flecked eschatological dread, the grinding mecha-dirge power of "Drapes Hung By Jesus", all grueling pneumatic heaviness and searing synthesizers, crushing sludge metal splattered with distant, breathtaking sax melodies. A powerful debut from one of my favorite new bands to emerge in the past year...